It’s a thing that many of us long for.

But underneath that, what we really long for is this sense of belonging. A feeling that brings with it safety and acceptance. Permission to be who we truly are.

Community is something that is all around us. You may even be a participant in multiple communities.

But I think the kind of community that many of us are more deeply longing for is one that involves much deeper connections. Deeper intimacy, deeper conversations, deeper love, deeper acceptance, deepen nourishment, deeper compassion and kindness.

We are CRAVING DEPTH in our lives. It’s so easy (and comfortable) to live life at the surface, having meaningless small talk, suppressing our emotions, suffocating our aliveness and desires and pleasures.

But if you really wanted easy, you wouldn’t be here, reading this email. I see you. I see all of your desires and the type of life you truly deeply crave to be living. And I can tell you, you won’t be able to manifest these things alone.

If you want more depth in your life, you need to find a community that will help to take you there. Because it’s a treacherous journey, and I don’t mean in the physical sense, but in the emotional and psychological sense. Your psyche is riddled with boobie traps, gatekeepers, and ghosts there to haunt you from your past.

We need each other to keep each other safe, to keep each other going when it gets hard. Because it’s easy to give up and turn around and go back to what you know. But doing that isn’t going to get you to where your soul wants to take you.

So I encourage you to find your community. Find people who are loving and welcoming and accepting. Who don’t give you a weird feeling. Somewhere that you can start to relax and that resonates with you.

In this week’s episode of Bridge to the Heart, Parshawn and I chat about what makes a good community, what to look for and what to avoid and a lot more. So give it a listen if it calls to you!

And quick special announcement, I will be hosting a free online Embodiment Workshop next Wednesday March 6th at 6:30pm PST where we will be connecting to our body wisdom and journeying into our shadows to bring things to the surface that are ready to be healed. Here is the link to join!

Listen Now

Much love and many blessings,

Rachel & Parshawn

P.S. Fun Facts!

Parshawn played piano as a kid.

In college, Rachel studied abroad in Italy for a semester. (pictured in Venice)

What does freedom - TRUE uninhibited freedom - look like for you?

Here are some areas of your life to invite this question into:

• Your romantic relationship (if you’re in one)

• Your family

• Your sexuality

• Your career

• Your money

• Your time

• Your connection to the divine

• Your community

What does freedom look like, sound like, smell like, act like, taste like, FEEL like in all of these areas of your life?

Where are you NOT free? What weights are you carrying…i.e. fears, stories, traumas, beliefs? What masks are you wearing to help you pretend to be someone you’re not?

As someone who loves to play in the shadows…for me, these questions are where the deep inner work is.

As you start to sit with these question, know that some of the answers may still be hanging out in your subconscious, hiding from your awareness, but just by inviting the questions into your energetic field, the answers will start to come. The work is in using discernment and being willing to acknowledge what’s actually true for you…even if it scares you.

In this week’s episode of the Bridge to the Heart podcast, Parshawn and I start off by talking about freedom. This is a REALLY big topic that we only brushed the surface of, but we get into what freedom feels and looks like for us, blocks we’ve worked with, finding the gifts in the shit, how to move out of feeling stuck and more!

It was a fun episode for us to record as there were lots of energetic waves that you can catch and practice tuning into. So we hope you enjoy it!

Lastly, quick update! We are moving to releasing episodes every other week as we are finding our rhythm and balance and also working on producing new episodes. We appreciate your love, support and listening!

Listen to the Podcast

Much love and many blessings,

Rachel and Parshawn

P.S. Fun Facts!

Parshawn’s favorite part of 2023 was working with these kiddos.

Rachel enjoys going backcountry backpacking. This particular trip was actually pretty brutal…long story short, lots of elevation and way too many mosquitos 😑.

We MUST feel prepared so as to minimize the outcome of failure.

But I want to challenge this idea of “readiness” and reframe it.

Consider what it means to be ready vs. aligned.

Personally, I don’t like the word “ready” when it comes to inner work because it leaves too much room for excuses, stories and limiting beliefs to infiltrate and taint your intuition and your gnosis of what the next right step is on your path.

So instead of making decisions based on if I feel ready or not, I have shifted to making decisions based on what feels aligned or not.

In doing this, I give healthy space for their to be fear, anxiety, panic, etc. Now there’s a subtle nuanced difference here in how I allow the same protective stories to express themselves.

When I can acknowledge that something is in alignment, I am building trust with myself. I am making a commitment to that alignment and saying that “yes, I believe that this is FOR me” even if I’m scared, nervous, anxious.

In my humble opinion, readiness leans too much into whether or not I feel prepared for something and if you’ve done any deep inner work, you know that you are often walking into highly unknown territory that you can’t really prepare for.

So if you can’t prepare for something that is unknown, how can you really know if you’re ready or not? It’s certainly much more difficult.

Hence, the shift into asking the question “is this aligned?” instead of “am I ready?”

I just went pretty deep into the energetic nuances or how you can better make decisions that are aligned with your highest good, so if I lost you, it’s okay. We keep it way more high-level in this week’s episode of the Bridge to the Heart Podcast! Parshawn and I weaved some beautiful wisdom around how to find your alignment, how to develop your intuition, how to play with fear as a marker for your truth and a lot more!

**Caveat to this idea of readiness: I am certainly not saying that there aren’t things you will feel genuinely ready for. As you build your trust, faith and confidence in yourself, your knowing and your connection to the divine (whatever that looks like for you), you will feel a quiet shift as you develop the courage and strength to feel prepared in the face of fear and adversity.

The biggest point I am trying to make through all of this is to not let the fear of failing because “you don’t feel ready” interfere with something that is deeply calling you and feels aligned…it would truly be a disservice to yourself and to all of the people you could positively influence by following what is aligned for you and your path.

Great…stepping off my soap box now, thanks for tuning in!

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Cheers!

Rachel & Parshawn

P.S. Fun Facts!

Rachel didn’t cook her first egg until she was a sophomore in college!

Parshawn broke his elbow in fourth grade because he went down the stairs at his house in heelys (which if you don’t know are those tennis shoes with the wheels in the heels lol)

I get into this in more detail in this week’s episode of the Bridge to the Heart podcast, but to summarize briefly, a friend encouraged and inspired me to start exploring the esoteric things I’ve always been curious about: tarot cards, mediums, and psychic abilities. So I spent a few months diving into these things, buying courses, reading books and blogs, and joining communities to start to develop my “clair” senses (clairvoyance, clairaudience, claircognizance , etc).

Now, I am someone who needs a little more accountability than a self-paced course provides, so I decided to start seeking out a mentor. This is when Parshawn helped me get connected with the man that I ended up working with who I will respectfully keep anonymous.

Within 2 weeks, I found myself taking a 5-hour drive up to Washington from Portland (where I was house-sitting for a few weeks) to spend 4 days with this man that I had only spoken with over the phone. Mind you, I was very naive about this whole experience to the point where I didn’t ask questions, I just trusted. So I went into those 4-days knowing NOTHING about what the hell I was signing up for, but had I known what was going to happen I probably would not have gone. So some things are better left unknown.

What transpired over those 4-days ended up being the most intense groundbreaking and transformational experience I have had until this point. No psychedelics, no drugs, none of that. Just someone to pick apart all of the lies and stories I had been telling myself to keep me playing small, powerless, and in a victim mindset.

He led me straight into my first dark night of the soul…

In this week’s podcast episode I go into many of the lessons I learned and the methods that got me to those lessons. For more on how this experience changed my life, listen to the Bridge to the Heart podcast on Spotify or Apple!

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Hope you enjoy!

Love and Blessings,

Rachel and Parshawn

P.S. Fun Facts

The only bone Rachel has ever broken was her nose after getting headed in the face in soccer in high school.

Parshawn bit a persimmon in middle school and broke his braces right off his teeth!

He shares about his experiences with grief, hitting rock bottom, discovering self-care practices and other steps he took to remember and rebuild himself after loss.

It only took 3 recording sessions and a bruised ego to get this episode out, but I think you’ll really enjoy it.

There’s a really beautiful and profound experience that Parshawn had with a Coach that I want to share with you in this audio clip:

Here’s the link to the transcript if you would like to read it.

You can listen to the full story around this breakthrough moment and the rest of Parshawn’s journey by listening to the Bridge to the Heart podcast on Spotify or Apple! And if you would be so kind as to leave us a favorable review (only takes a couple wags of the finger), we would be very grateful so we can share our learnings with more people!

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify

Hope you enjoy!

Cheers,

Rachel & Parshawn

P.S. FUN FACTS!

Rachel used to love eating frozen tater tots and french fries as a kid!

Parshawn learned to walk before crawling as a bébé.

We develop relationships, we get hurt, and we recover with new protection mechanisms (and stories) in place to keep us from experiencing the same level of hurt again.

Tangible example from my own life that just dropped in for me recently:

When I was in kindergarten, I had a crush on a boy and during nap time one day, I put my mat where I could see him. Once the lights were out, I got his attention and I blew him a kiss. What I received back was a look of disgust as he mouthed “EW” back to me.

That was the first time (that I can consciously remember) that my love was rejected. Feeling embarrassed and deflated, I then developed a fear around rejection and learned that my love wasn’t safe to give openly. Over time and through different experiences, this fear grew and grew and I withheld my love and affection more and more.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all experienced something similar where we acted out of love and didn’t receive what we wanted back. And that hurts. But how can you start to rewire some of those outdated protection mechanisms and let go of the fears you’ve developed about giving or receiving love?

Well, I would recommend tuning into this week’s episode of the Bridge to the Heart podcast, as Parshawn and I dive deeper into why love can be scary, where vulnerability plays a role, what practices you can explore to help you access deeper levels of love for yourself and others! This conversation was a JOURNEY in itself and, in my humbly unbiased opinion, there are some juicy and tangible takeaways. Available to listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

With love, gratitude, and blessings,

Rachel & Parshawn

P.S. Fun facts about us:

Rachel’s top 5 favorite movies right now are:

• Hunt for the Wilderpeople

• Peanut Butter Falcon

• Frozen 2

• Moana

• Coco

Parshawn’s favorite fruit is mango.

Before I dive more into discomfort and the beautiful things that come with it, I want to take a moment to introduce ourselves. Hi, hello, if we haven’t met yet, my name is Rachel Oster and I am the co-host of the podcast Bridge to the Heart with Parshawn Behestian. You may be formerly familiar with Parshawn as the founder of the Howefeelin podcast. As the mission, efforts, and people behind Howefeelin have evolved, so has the look and feel of this podcast. The new version of this platform was born out of two friends catching up, swapping personal development stories and both having a desire to touch the souls of others in an attempt to better this world in some way. What started as private conversations, are now public conversations where our goal is to inspire, motivate, move, activate, inform or open your heart in some way. And if you’re not feeling any of those things, we get it. We can’t be everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee), so no offense will be taken if your journey takes you elsewhere. But if you’re picking up what we’re putting down, we would love to get to know you! So please please please, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on IG on any of our accounts and say hey! (@bridgetotheheart, @life_coach_roach, & @parshawn.b)

Alright back to it.

DISCOMFORT! The thing we (as personal development devotees) love to hate and hate to love. It’s the thing that we can’t grow without. Now how much discomfort you experience is directly correlated to how much you fight and resist and hang on to the things that don’t serve you.

CLARIFICATION: The kind of discomfort I’m talking about here is that “just outside of your comfort zone” discomfort, not the “oh shit, I’m not safe and probably need to remove myself from this situation” kind of discomfort. You can picture it like a dart board, the core is your comfort zone, the next ring is your healthy/growth potential discomfort zone, and the outside ring is your GTFO zone. Ok, glad we cleared that up…onwards!

Discomfort is often a marker for our triggers. We feel uncomfortable for a reason and it may trigger us to shut down, to react, to fight, to storm away, to avoid, or a number of other options. When working with discomfort, the work starts with bringing awareness to the fact that you are feeling uncomfortable. You need to be able to identify what this state feels like for you in order to bring awareness to it and then work with it.

Once you can take the observer role and acknowledge that you are feeling uncomfortable, then you can start to do the digging to find the root of what is triggering you to be in this state. And I want to make a note here: more often than not, you will realize you were uncomfortable AFTER the fact, after the moment(s) of discomfort have passed. It takes A LOT of practice to get to the point where you can identify your discomfort and take action in the moment. So go easy on yourself in your practice phase.

How do you dig to get to the root? You get curious. You walk through the situation again. Asking yourself questions like WHEN did I start to feel uncomfortable? Have I felt this kind of discomfort before? Does this only happen in a particular setting? What was I feeling nervous, anxious, afraid of? Then when you’re ready to go a layer deeper you can bring out the big guns and start asking WHY.

Here’s a practice:

Ask yourself WHY 7x. So with every answer, ask yourself why that was your answer.

Ex. I get uncomfortable in big group social settings.

WHY do I get uncomfortable in big group social settings?

Because I don’t feel confident in my ability to talk to people?

WHY do I not feel confident to talk to people?

Because I feel like they’re judging me and going to think I’m weird.

WHY do I feel like they’re judging me and going to think I’m weird?

Get the idea?

Discomfort signals that we are triggered and triggers signal that there’s something deeper here for us to look at. Something that is more than likely hidden in our subconscious so we have to dig for it by contemplating, meditating, journaling, or doing embodiment practices to name a few tools.

Parshawn and I dive in a lot deeper and share our own personal stories of discomfort in this week’s podcast episode, which you can listen to by clicking here if you listen on Apple Podcasts and here if you listen on Spotify (otherwise you can search “Bridge to the Heart Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform)!

Thanks for journeying with us!

Cheers,

Rachel and Parshawn

P.S. Fun facts about me and Parshawn:

I (Rachel) was born with an extra tooth in the roof of my mouth and Parshawn is afraid of fish!